Smartlead’s cheapest plan costs $39 a month and lets you connect as many mailboxes as you like. It also stops at 6,000 emails a month to 2,000 stored contacts. On Smartlead, the plan you need depends on how many emails you send, not on how many people or mailboxes you have.
So the first number to work out is your monthly send volume. The second is how many channels your buyers answer on, because Smartlead is built for email and calling.
The short version
Choose Smartlead if most of your outreach is cold email, you send thousands of emails a month from many mailboxes, and you want warm-up and mailbox buying in the same tool. For pure email volume it is cheap per send.
Consider something else if your sequences also need LinkedIn steps that run on their own, you reach buyers on Instagram or WhatsApp, or you send a few hundred emails a month and do not want to think in send credits.
We build Doreach, which competes with Smartlead for some of the same buyers. Every price, limit and feature below was checked against Smartlead’s own pricing page and help center on 8 October 2026.
Smartlead pricing
Smartlead has four plans. Each one includes unlimited mailboxes and warm-up, and each one is capped by two counters: how many emails you send in a month and how many contacts you store.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing (17% off) | Email sends a month | Contacts stored | Client workspaces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $39 a month | $32.50 a month | 6,000 | 2,000 | No |
| Pro | $94 a month | $78.30 a month | 90,000 | 30,000 | Add-on, $39 a month |
| Unlimited Smart | $174 a month | $144.50 a month | 150,000 | Unlimited | Add-on, $39 a month |
| Unlimited Prime | $379 a month | $314.60 a month | 500,000 | Unlimited | 3 included |
Smartlead’s FAQ explains the two counters. A contact is a unique email address stored in your account. A send is every email that goes out, including each follow-up. A three-step sequence to 2,000 people uses all 6,000 of Base’s monthly sends.
White labeling, which lets an agency show clients its own brand, is a $29 a month add-on for each client workspace. There is no lock-in contract on either billing period.
The free trial runs for 14 days with no credit card. Smartlead’s help center lists 2,500 email sends, 1,250 stored contacts and unlimited mailbox connections, with every feature except white labeling.
The mailboxes are yours to supply
“Unlimited mailboxes” means Smartlead does not charge you to connect them. It does not mean Smartlead provides them. Smartlead’s own FAQ says each plan includes unlimited email accounts at no extra cost, and you still have to own those accounts.
You have two routes. Connect mailboxes you already pay for in Google Workspace, Outlook or an SMTP provider. Or buy them through Smartlead’s SmartSenders add-on, which lists fresh Google or Outlook mailboxes at $4.50 per mailbox a month plus $13 per domain a year, and pre-warmed mailboxes at $9 a month plus $18 per domain a year.
Smartlead sells more add-ons on top. SmartDelivery, which tests where your emails land, runs from $49 to $599 a month. Dedicated sending servers are $39 each a month. Email verification starts at $32. SmartDialer, the calling add-on, starts at $9 a month in credits.
What we would tell you not to do. Do not buy twenty domains and sixty mailboxes in your first week because the plan allows unlimited mailboxes. Every new mailbox and domain needs time before it should send cold email at full pace, and each one adds a monthly fee somewhere, even if not on Smartlead’s bill. Work out how many emails you will actually send, divide by a modest daily number per mailbox, and buy that many.
Smartlead covers email and calling
Smartlead’s campaign builder has three step types. An Email step sends an email. A Call step puts the lead into the SmartDialer calling queue if you pay for SmartDialer and the lead has a phone number. A Manual Task step pauses the sequence and gives someone on your team a job to do.
LinkedIn is where the channel list matters. Smartlead’s help center names LinkedIn outreach as a use for manual tasks, which means a person opens LinkedIn and sends the message by hand. For automated LinkedIn steps, Smartlead documents integrations with separate LinkedIn tools, HeyReach and Aimfox among them, that move a lead into a LinkedIn campaign when they reply, open or click.
Running LinkedIn through an integration means paying for two subscriptions, keeping two sets of settings and watching two places where a reply can arrive. Smartlead does not list Instagram or WhatsApp as channels.
Inside email, Smartlead covers a lot. Built-in warm-up, rotation across connected mailboxes, a master inbox for replies and a CRM board are all on its feature pages. If email is your only channel, the tool goes deep on it.
How the same setup works in Doreach
Doreach is a multi-channel outreach platform. One subscription at $45 a month gives you LinkedIn, email, Instagram and WhatsApp, and you can connect a LinkedIn account, a mailbox, an Instagram account and a WhatsApp account straight away. Extra sending accounts are add-ons on any channel: $45 a month for another LinkedIn account and $9 a month for another mailbox. How account and mailbox billing works has the current prices.
Doreach does not count your sends or your stored contacts against a plan. The limit sits on each account instead. A new mailbox starts at 30 emails a day with a random gap of 3 to 15 minutes between emails, and you can set it anywhere from 1 to 200 a day from the account’s Limits panel. Limits and pacing holds the current defaults for every channel.
In a campaign, you add a LinkedIn step, an email step and, if your buyers use them, an Instagram or WhatsApp step, each with its own delay. Before you launch, Doreach shows how many of your contacts have the detail each channel needs, so you can see, for example, that the email step will reach 140 of your 200 people before anything sends. Multi-channel outreach shows one campaign moving a prospect between channels.
Connect several mailboxes and Doreach spreads the campaign across them with inbox rotation, and each prospect keeps hearing from the same mailbox. Multiple sender accounts explains how that works on each channel. Every reply, from LinkedIn, email, Instagram or WhatsApp, lands in the unified inbox, and the sequence stops for anyone who replies unless you turn that off for the campaign.
Doreach does not warm up mailboxes, does not sell mailboxes or domains, and does not verify email addresses. You send from Gmail, Outlook or any IMAP mailbox you already own. If built-in warm-up is a requirement, Smartlead has it and Doreach does not.
What each setup costs
The two tools price different things, so the honest comparison is two real teams. Prices are on monthly billing and leave out the cost of the mailboxes themselves, which you pay to Google or Microsoft with either tool.
| Team | Smartlead | Doreach |
|---|---|---|
| Email only, 20 mailboxes, up to 90,000 sends a month | Pro, $94 a month | Subscription plus 19 extra mailboxes, $216 a month |
| Three reps, each with one LinkedIn account and two mailboxes | Pro, $94 a month, plus a separate LinkedIn tool for three accounts | Subscription plus 2 extra LinkedIn accounts and 5 extra mailboxes, $180 a month |
For the email-only team, Smartlead is clearly cheaper. Paying per mailbox adds up fast at twenty mailboxes, and Smartlead includes warm-up that Doreach does not offer.
For the three reps, the Smartlead figure is incomplete. Their LinkedIn outreach needs another product, priced per LinkedIn account, and their replies arrive in two inboxes. The Doreach figure covers both channels, and team members are free.
Where Smartlead falls short
LinkedIn is not a native step. Automated LinkedIn outreach needs a second tool connected through an integration, or a person working through manual tasks.
Two counters decide your plan. A long sequence uses sends quickly. A team with 3,000 contacts and three follow-ups is already past Base on both counters.
The headline price leaves out the mailboxes. Unlimited mailboxes cost nothing to connect, but you buy each one somewhere, and Smartlead’s own mailbox add-on charges per mailbox and per domain.
Instagram and WhatsApp are not covered. If your buyers answer there, those conversations happen outside Smartlead.
Verdict
Smartlead is a cold email platform priced for volume. At $39 a month for 6,000 sends, or $94 for 90,000, it is a low cost per email, and warm-up and mailbox buying sit in the same tool.
Smartlead is a weaker fit when outreach runs on more than email. LinkedIn needs a second subscription, Instagram and WhatsApp are not there, and replies end up in more than one place.
Before you choose, write down two numbers: the emails you will send each month, and the channels your buyers actually reply on. If the second number is one, price Smartlead’s plans against the first. If it is more than one, start a 7-day Doreach trial, connect your first account, and build one campaign with a LinkedIn step and an email step to see who each step can reach.
